Receive the latest local updates in your inbox

State police will take over the investigation of a former Centre County District Attorney with ties to Jerry Sandusky who has been missing since 2005. (Published Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2014)

Updated at 7:57 PM EDT on Tuesday, Feb 11, 2014

State police are assuming a lead role in a decade-long search for a missing central Pennsylvania prosecutor who declined to prosecute former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

Former Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar has not been seen since leaving work in 2005, seven years after he decided against charging Sandusky following a woman's complaint to State College police that Sandusky had showered with her son. Gricar was declared legally dead in 2011.

The county's current district attorney, Stacy Parks Miller, formed a task force in 2010 to investigate Gricar's disappearance.

Rankin said state troopers from Hollidaysburg, Rockview and Lewistown will be handling the investigation, taking over at the request of police in Bellefonte, where Gricar had worked as county prosecutor.

After the 59-year-old Gricar vanished in April 2005, his vehicle was recovered in Lewisburg and his computer was found in the Susquehanna River.

In September, the Altoona Mirror reported that the FBI and other investigators were looking into a claim that Gricar had been killed in retaliation for a case he prosecuted and that his body was dumped in a mine shaft.